Farewell Post

Goodbye from all of us :(, Sayonora and Arigatou Gou-shaimastte 

MICHAEL MEROLA EVALUATION - QUESTION 4

4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

     Firstly, one new media technology that we used heavily during the research stage of our music video was YouTube in observing and taking notes at not only other popular music videos for inspiration, but in general watching clips from films and television programmes to inspire us to use any techniques that we saw that could possibly work in our music video.

In addition, we analysed many digipaks right from the beginning of the process in order to gain knowledge on the most essential features of a digipak, its style and common format.


     We already knew how to operate our DSLR cameras as we had worked with them on previous tasks and projects, most notably our thriller opening from Year 12. We also had previous experience with the lighting equipment. We noted any mistakes or problems that occurred whilst making our thriller opening beforehand to make sure that the issue would not happen again.



     We used blogger during all three phases of production. In pre production, we used blogger to post our research onto which included things such as research into music genre, music videos and digipak designs. We also used blogger during post production in order to post the final product of both the music video, the digipak and the magazine advert.



     We also used soundcloud as a way of finding the song which we would use. We chose this website as it was easy to access and use in order to search for songs which had not been copyrighted (unsigned artist). It was also simple to download a song from this website that we liked.



     Another media technology we used for the creation of both the digipak and the promotional poster for our magazine advert was adobe photoshop. We chose this software as it was easy to use and it was very simple to make any changes to our product which was particularly useful as we were constantly getting audience feedback on any changes and improvements that we could make in order to ensure that our product was the best it could be. For example, we were constantly changing the font, size and style of the word "SPUR" as there was a varied difference between audiences opinions. However once we had narrowed it down to two possible font designs, one was more popular by a big margin, and so therefore we stuck to the design below on the left hand side.

     We used final cut pro to edit our music video. We chose this editing software as it was not only the best editing software available to use for us but it was also easy to use and it was simple to edit anything once we received audience feedback. We also were able to add some special effects in an attempt to enhance the product.


     We also used the iMac computers to edit the music video on as well as posting things for our blogs. I found the iMacs easy to use as we had used them before for previous projects and it had all of the most important software we needed to use already on it and as a group, we were all familiar with these programmes. Importing and exporting clips was also very easy to perform.

MICHAEL MEROLA EVALUATION - QUESTION 3

3.What have you learned from your audience feedback?

     From our first audience feedback during pre production, our group learnt the following things. Firstly, in one particular shot, some people thought that one filming effect may be too difficult to execute well and so therefore we tested it out a few weeks before we started production and the end result was not to our satisfaction and so therefore we scrapped it and replaced it with a similar scene but with no camera tricks.

     Once our first draft was edited together, we asked for audience feedback. Most people critically praised the narrative part of the story and how it fitted the beat of the song itself. However, some band shots did not and so therefore we worked on that area of the video to improve it. Once we were happy with it after re watching the entire video many times, we exported the edit and displayed it to a large audience as a final product. Many people enjoyed the mysteriousness and bizarreness with occurs due to the main character taking drugs and seeing things that are not really there. Everybody successfully identified that the narrative part of the song was themed around the issue of teenagers taking drugs and the harmful effects that occur as a result.

     Overall, after viewing our music video for the first time, our audience reacted very positively. One of our aims for our audience to understand was to not only make sure they understand what is going on in the music video itself visually but also to create questions and a sense of mystery as for example, no information is presented to the audience regarding the background situation of the main protagonist and so therefore the audience is constantly questioning the intentions and reasoning behind the protagonist taking drugs. As creators, our thinking process behind why the main character decides to take drugs was a consequence of him trying to forget and wipe from his mind that he has just recently experienced an end of a relationship with someone as is indicatedd by the songs lyrics. Effectively, he is escaping his depression by taking drugs in an attempt for him to move to an alternate reality. However, once he is in this alternate reality, he becomes frightened and scared at what he sees and immediately regrets his decision, as is seen when he has his head on the dinner table.



     Once we had uploaded the video on YouTube to the public, we were able to statistically analyse people's opinions about the video if they chose to leave a comment or like or dislike the video. Of course this is optional and so all the data we gathered from this was not from every person who watched the video. Overall, so far, the video has received five likes and one dislike and one comment irrelevant to the video itself. This means according to the data of the like and dislike buttons, it had an approval rate of 83.3%.



     We also received mixed feedback on our magazine advert. From our first draft of our advert, many  people were quite positive about it and its overall look and feel. However, some negative criticism we received was due to the font of the text being not particularly eye catching or eye pleasing. The positioning of the text was also not to people's liking and so therefore we took this criticism onboard and we edited and altered it to make it look overall better, which it did. Once we showed the final print product to a selected audience, they really enjoyed it, its simplicity but also the darkness and question marks surrounding it as it doesn't give away many answers at all on what the song is about, its genre and its intended target audience. However, it can be argued that its target audience is for teenagers based on the fact that its artist and the actor in the music video is of a similar age.

MICHAEL MEROLA EVALUATION - QUESTION 2

2.How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

     The combination of our main product and ancillary texts have worked well. The ancillary texts reflected the theme and mood of the music video well. The background of the promotional poster is quite dark, reflecting on the negative theme of drugs and its harmful effects quite well. As the songs title is called "Fire", we added elements of colours normally associated with fire such as red as a form of synergy. We also made and constructed an image of a star in an octagon to also show synergy and also to identify and establish a well known symbol for this artist. This can also be called the artists logo. However, we decided to not place the symbol on the front of the digipak to keep it more simplistic and in order to keep most of the information on the back cover.




Magazine Advert



Digipak (Front Cover)

Digipak (Back Cover)

     Both the digipak and the promotional poster contain the same image of the actor, including the background lighting. The textual display (font, size and positioning) is also the same. The font itself is in capital letters so it is readable and the white colour makes the title stand out from the dark background behind. We also titled the album "The New Sounds" in order to give emphasis that this is a new product. The word new is also attractive to consumers who value newer products as those which have better quality than products that are already out in the market.

    The actor (displayed on the front cover) gives off little to no emotions signifying that the songs inside are quite negative or that the lyrics may contain a darkened story, which is does.

   Any ordinary member of the general public could clearly identify the similarities between both the magazine advert and the digipak. This means there would be no issues with consumers trying to identify, find and locate the digipak solely based on the advert they saw. The advert in general is also extremely readable for passers by to quickly look at whilst they go about their daily business and during this time, they would be clearly able to identify what it is advertising and the posters contains information in which they can easily access to increase their interests, leading them to make purchases of the product itself.

     Here is an example of an artist using the same/similar images for both their digipak and advert.

Digipak:



Advert:





     Our digipak also contains the lyrics to the songs in the album in the form of a booklet found inside the product, therefore it would provide great convenience for consumers to find the words to the song if they chose to sing along to the song. It also allows the consumer to understand what is really being said in the song itself as often, people don't understand the full meaning behind the lyrics of a song. The image on the back is also shown in the music video itself, linking the music video with the digipak once again.

MICHAEL MEROLA EVAULATION - QUESTION 1

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

     During the pre production process of our music video, we took inspiration from pre existing videos. We tried to find a song that not only sounded great but also had good potential to create a fantastic music video around. Once we all agreed on a certain non copyrighted song, we started planning out the storyboard. Whilst creating it, we did look at other music videos and noted that most commonly, there are two popular elements that make up a music video, a narrative element and an instrumental element where shots of the singer and/or instruments are visible. We took this knowledge and inserted it into our storyboard by having these two elements in our own storyboard. Our narrative dealt with the issue of teenagers and drugs as our central main character suffers the effects of taking drugs. Drugs and other political issues are often seen in real media products.

     We also thoroughly analysed the songs lyrics as it is crutial to understand what is happening and what is being talked about in the song in order to produce a relevant music video for it. Whilst analysing the lyrics we understood the explaination and emotions behind the essential singer of the song, who they are talking about and why they are talking about this certain person in a particular and strongly emotional way.

     We also looked into Andrew Goodwins theory on music videos. He suggests that live instruments, close ups, a liberal lifestyle, lip syncing and the video itself to be set in a studio is key in creating a successful music video. His theory inspired us to create band shots which would appear in between the narrative shots as during our first draft, our main focus was too much on the narrative part of our music video, less focusing on the instrumental part.

     Our digipak and promotional magazine advert follow the conventions of real media products. It contains a title that stands out well as well as key information regarding the date of when it shall be released. It also shows the main artist as its main focus point. Many bands do something similar to this and we took note of this and applied it to our work. However, we decided to use the actor in the music video as the main image and focus point of our digipak and front cover as we felt that in the music video itself, the audience would be more connected to the narrative character than the musician. We also included the website at the very bottom of the advert in order allow people who are interested an easier way to research more on the artist and their new album.

     We also decided to include the words "The Hit Single-Fire" on the magazine advert as a way of communicating to the consumer or to the general public that the artist has had great success with one of the songs placed in the album, heightening the overall quality of the product and the surrounding praise and positive criticism around it.

     On the front cover of the digipak itself, we included the words "Bonus Collection Set" in order to attract more people to purchase our product. This is because we felt that generally, people would be more likely or more tempted to buy a product if they knew they were getting more than the original version if it contained the word "Bonus". However, our main focus of people to be attracted to this would be for people who were fans of the artist and/or who wanted to use the product and they would not only want to purchase the digipak for the physical CD but also to the other accessories and information booklets that come with it which contain possible information about the artist, the songs, the lyrics and other background information, possibly including hints to new songs for the future.

     We took inspiration from other media texts to observe how certain groups and issues were represented from different filmmakers. However, we tried to not be influenced by what we saw too much and instead tried to represent things based on our own opinions and general instincts.

CONSTRUCTION: Digipak (Spine)

For the spine of the digipak, we decided to go for a simple and dark look. We chose to use a black background and we've included the band name and the album name.

CONSTRUCTION: Digipak (Back Cover)

For the back cover, we decided that it was going to include a song list for the album since most real digipaks also did this, we decided to do it too to not only to enhance the digipak's appearance of being a real product but also, it's to show our audience what songs there are. The song list includes the track we used for our music video but the rest of the tracks have been made up.
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For the background of the back cover, we decided to use an image of one of the guitars that were used. It isn't a still from the music video but instead we decided to take a close up photo since we felt that using a still too often wouldn't make the digipak look real. We also decided for the edges of the back cover, it would have a bit of darkness so it would give the digipak a dark appearance.
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We included a bar code as well since the digipak would have to be purchased and it follows one of the conventions of a real digipak.
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Details about the digipak are also included in a small font. Most real digipaks also included this.

A logo that we created is also included. It's for synergistic link purposes.

The final back cover look

CONSTRUCTION: Digipak (Inside Covers)

We decided that for the inside cover, we would use stills from the music video. This is so the audience, when they open the digipak, will be able to see the images and it will have a gist of what the music video is going to look like. 

We also decided to include a little lyric booklet that connects with the still above because from looking at some real digipak examples, we noticed that in the inside of the digipak, it would usually come with an insert so in order to make our digipak look more convincing, we chose to add a booklet in order to conform to one of the conventions of a digipak.

Lyrics

CONSTRUCTION: Digipak (Front Cover)

Front Cover:

Initially, we thought of using this kind of font for the name of the band. We decided to use white as it would contrast from the black background heavily so therefore it would be able to stand out.

However, after some thinking we felt that the title looked a bit too thick so we decided to go for a much thinner font like the one below.

We agreed on using this kind of font so we decided to use it for the Band's name.

We also decided to use it in the album name except we made the font slightly thinner so that there would be a difference with the band's name and album name and that it wouldn't cause any confusion if they're in the same name.

We decided to use this image below of the protagonist of the narrative of the music video. The image isn't a still from the music video. It was taken separately after the filming. We wanted to go for a dark appearance with a red filter as the narrative was very negative since it was about the dangers of drugs so using red which connotes danger on the photo would show how the person in the photo is in danger.

We took a few shots of the protagonist and we believed that since the narrative was quite depressing, we could have the protagonist smile at all so we chose to use the image of the protagonist with a black facial expression instead.

We put everything together (The album name, band name and image) and we decided to use the image below as the front cover of the digipak.

Front Cover (Final Draft)

CONSTRUCTION: Magazine

To help us construct our own we used examples of some real ones, and looked for what the different conventions are in a magazine advert. We mainly used the image above which is an example of magazine advert for the artist, Jessie J.

Above is our first draft of our Magazine advert. We decided that as the narrative and the visuals of the music video was quite dark, we were going to go for a dark appearance. We chose to use a still from the music video which features the protagonist in the narrative that is a close up to his face but it has been dimmed out. A black background was chosen next as we found that it makes the protagonist look as if he is part of the background (as you can see in the still, we have applied a fade look on the edge of the still). We included the band/artist name called 'spur' and we decided to use a white font as it would make the name stand out and contrast from the black background. We've also included the album name which is called 'flames'

We decided that the font for the band name was going to be a plain and simple font and we decided that the colour should be white since we planned on having a dark background, the colour white would be able to make the band name stand out.


Below is the first draft of our magazine advert. We've applied the still and the title to the advert as well as the black background and we've included some other details such as ratings and the website since most real digipaks would do the same

Below is the second draft of our digipak. Some of the changes we made was that we changed the font of the band name since we felt that it wasn't standing out well enough. Also, we included a line at the top of the still saying that the album is out now since this was an advert.

Below is the third draft of our magazine advert. More changes were made to the overall look. We felt that the advert was lacking a variety of different colour. We noticed it was mostly dominated by black and white so for the album name, "Flames", we decided to colour it in orange as it's the same colour as real flames. Additionally we also included a label saying what songs the album will include on the top of the still.

 Initially we believed that the draft above would be our final product but from looking at it constantly from time to time, we felt that it didn't look really professional and it was lacking a couple of things such as colour, meaning and realism so we decided to start again.

For the background, we decided to use the image below we took ourselves. It's not a still from the music video. we weren't going to use a simple background that we could simply edit it. We instead used the darkness of the photo for our background. In terms of the image itself, we decided that since we wanted colour, we used a red filter. This was because it would convey the message of how the person in the image (who's the protagonist in the narrative of the M/V) is in danger since connotations of red is danger and also, it would make the magazine advert look more colourful.

Below is the fourth draft of our magazine advert. we used the image above for the background and we still applied the thick font for the band name. We changed the album name since it didn't really sound like a name for an album and also, it sounded too similar to the track we used. We changed it to "THE NEW SOUNDS". We also included labels we previously used such as what the album will include and the website. We also included a logo at the bottom left of the advert for synergistic link purposes.

Below is our final draft of the magazine advert. we showed the magazine advert above to an audience and we received feedback. They said it looked more convincing comparing it to our first draft. However they felt that the band name was too thick. It didn't look like it was part of the advert as it looks like it was simply just stamped on the advert because it didn't match the font of the other labels.

We took note of this feedback and decided to make the font of the band name thinner. It's more similar to the other labels and from receiving more audience feedback, they felt that the thinner font looked better.

FINAL PRODUCT: Magazine Advert

 

FINAL PRODUCT: Digipak

FINAL PRODUCT: Music Video

CONSTRUCTION: Digipak (Disc Cover)

Disc cover:

Initially we thought of using the image below as our disc cover.

Disc Cover (First draft)

For the image of the disc itself, we decided to have a repetition of the band's name going across the disc and for the background, we decided to use some dark colours that were also used in our music video.

We received a bit of audience feedback for our disc cover. They believed that our first draft was quite amateurish and it looked quite rushed. They thought the image for the disc was good but the background didn't look convincing for our audience. It looked like it was an image of a disc in front of a child's sketch.


We took note of this feedback that we were given and we felt that we needed to change the design of both the disc and the background. We felt that the synergistic link with our simple but unique font of our title should carry on other parts of the digipak such as the disc cover and we still wanted to go for a dark look so we decided to have the album name and the bands name on the disc with the same font that we used for the front cover of the digipak. We also decided to use black for both the disc and the background for the dark but simple look.

We received audience feedback from this and they believed that it looked more professional compared to our first draft. They could see that the same font was used and the poorly made background was removed so it took away its amateurish look.